


In the desert, where the cities are made of gold

by caughtinanocean



Category: Captain America, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, References to PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:47:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caughtinanocean/pseuds/caughtinanocean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky knows the kind of life Steve should have had, but there's some things that just aren't in the cards for a time-lapsed super-soldier with a former brainwashed Soviet assassin for a boyfriend. </p><p> <i>“We'd be pretty awesome at being parents together, though, if we could, right?” </i></p><p>
  <i>Bucky's pretty sure that's the single most heart-wrenching sentence that he's ever heard, but it's true. “We're a team.” </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the desert, where the cities are made of gold

**Author's Note:**

> Previously posted to LJ. I've tweaked it slightly since, but the changes are of the barely-discernable variety. Title from "Sierra" by Cursive.

“You're in your brooding spot.” 

Bucky jumps what feels like three feet in the air and goes for the gun he doesn't keep on him at home—an unfortunate reflex, but one he can't quite seem to overcome. “Jesus, Steve.”

“Sorry, Buck.” Steve crosses the expanse of balcony between them to wrap his arms around the other man. 

Bucky smiles, entwining the fingers of his flesh-and-blood hand with one of Steve's. He luxuriates in physical contact now, after the years of going without.“It's alright. I need to get used to it. Too many spies in this tower. Thor and Stark are the only ones I can ever hear coming—Ms. Potts, too, sometimes...but only when she's in heels.”

Steve kisses his temple. “So, what brings you out to the balcony on this lovely night?”

“You gonna ask me if I come here often, next, Cap? Shoulda picked up some better lines by now, spending all this time with me and with Stark.”

“Never needed any better lines with you. The ones I've got seem to work just fine.”

“Touché.” He rewards Steve with a kiss. “I was just out here thinking.”

“Brooding,” Steve corrects “Mind sharing what about?” He strokes Bucky's bionic arm with his free hand—he can't feel the touch, but Steve knows he gets self-conscious about the arm, makes sure to pay equal attention to cool metal and soft, warm skin. 

Bucky tightens his grip on Steve's hand. “It's just...I hate worrying you.”

“I'm gonna worry either way. Might as well talk to me.”

Bucky sighs a little—they've had this particular disagreement before, though it's lost some of the passion of the first frantic nights he woke Steve with his nightmares. Bucky was newly-himself, then, and they were new, too. It took a while for Bucky to realize that he couldn't shield Steve from the mess in his head and for Steve to realize that he couldn't just rescue Bucky from it. They've got the hang of this now; Steve knows when to back off and Bucky knows when to share. 

Right now, Steve's chest is warm against his back, and Bucky is so in love that sharing his current set of worries doesn't even seem like a compromise; what Steve wants he can have. “You know I loved you the whole time, right? Since before the war, almost as long as I can remember?”

Steve kisses his hair, as if trying to make amends—it had taken almost losing Bucky during the war to make him realize he was in love, and him coming back from the presumed-dead for Steve to admit it. 

“You know why I never told you?” He leans back to rest his head on Steve's shoulder. “Never thought I deserved you, but that wouldn't 've been enough. What really did it was knowing I couldn't offer you anything besides a life of hiding, and that wasn't any kind of life for you. You're too brave and too noble for that, anyway. Would've probably insisted on kissing me in public and getting us both arrested. And you deserved someone you could walk down the street with, someone you could marry. Buncha kids, a dog.”

Steve leans down to kiss his neck, and Bucky sighs—a contented little sound. Steve has him all figured out that way—knows how much little things like that reassure him. 

“And then, we both wind up alive in the next damn century. Two men can walk down the street holding hands, no problem. And if anyone did wanna hassle us, they'd think twice about it, those muscles of yours. We can even get married in New York, now.” Bucky's eyes go huge before he finishes the sentence. “Not that I'm asking—I mean, right at this particular moment. Definitely not ruling it out. I mean...” He twists around to bury his face in Steve's shoulder. 

Steve is laughing, and it's just...the happiest sound. “Now that I know the topic of marriage gets you this flustered, I'll be sure to bring up more often.” 

“Some boyfriend you are. Stop laughing at me, jerk!” He can't stop himself smiling against the fabric of Steve's shirt, though. 

They both regain their composure, and Bucky stops hiding and starts talking. “So we're living in a world where both of us having dicks isn't a problem, and this thing we've got here, now—it's the real deal. The problem now, is me. The Red Room kinda did a number on my head, in case you haven't noticed.” 

He can feel Steve rolling his eyes—they've been over and over Bucky's less-than-prime mental state and how Steve is along for the ride either way. 

Bucky pulls away from him and leans against the railing, so he can look straight into those eyes. “I can't have kids with you, Steve.” 

“I know the birds and bees don't work like that with the parts we've got, Buck,” he replies, voice fond, and maybe a little bit gentle. 

“It's not just that, Steve. Someone else could adopt—not me. The first thing I do when I get startled is go for the nearest weapon. It still takes me hours to get over the daytime flashbacks when I have them—and that's with you there to help me through it.” 

His grips the railing, hard. “And the nightmares—a little kid shouldn't have to deal with something like their dad waking up screaming almost every night. Kids are supposed to be able to crawl into bed with their parents if they get scared at night. Our bed would be too dangerous for that—because of me.”

Bucky pauses for a moment; he's on the verge of shaking from the intensity of his words now. “Dads are supposed to protect their kids from the monster under the bed. I spent decades _being_ that monster. and part of me is never coming back from that. If you were someone else, that wouldn't matter. But you're _Steve Rogers_ —you're the best man I've ever known, and you would be...you would be such a great father.” 

The thought of Steve with a tiny version of himself—a child with sincere blue eyes and a mop of blonde hair—twists Bucky's heart into knots. “Being with you and knowing—knowing that you could be with anyone you wanted, with someone who might come close to deserving you—I feel guilty for that, but I've made my peace with being a selfish bastard. Keeping you from getting to be a dad, though? I don't know if I'll get over that one. And the world needs little versions of you...”

“Bucky.” The two syllables of his name convey a whole world of emotions. Steve reaches out and grabs his hand, tangling their fingers and swallowing it in both his own. “Buck, it's not just you.”

Bucky looks at him, perplexed. 

“Any expectations I ever had of a normal life went out the door with the serum—and that was before I was frozen from seventy years— _seventy years_ , Bucky. It might be better than it was, easier, especially now that you're here, but I'm still a stranger in a strange place. And while there's stuff I love about this new world,” Steve's eyes flicker to their entwined hands. “I haven't exactly had an easy time adjusting.”

He reels Bucky in, pulling him closer—so close that there's hardly any space between them at all—and slides one hand up to stroke his elbow. “You know you're not the only one who still wakes up from nightmares, Buck. Mine might be getting a little less frequent, but you're there after; you know they're pretty bad.” He smiles, and its uncharacteristic in its bitterness. “Neither of us can deal with the cold.”

Bucky closes the tiny gap between them, and Steve lets go of his hand to hug him close instead. “I'm not exactly in the position to offer a kid much right now. And maybe someday I'll be okay enough to be a dad, and maybe that same someday you still won't. That's a risk I'm willing to take, though—and it's my decision to take that risk. You can't feel bad about my decisions.”

Bucky nods from where his face is pressed into the crook of Steve's neck. “Makes sense,” he mutters into Steve's skin. 

“We'd be pretty awesome at being parents together, though, if we could, right?” 

Bucky's pretty sure that's the single most heart-wrenching sentence that he's ever heard, but it's true. “We're a team.”

“We're both enhanced, so we could have a bunch without them wearing us out too bad. I'd be the strict one, and you'd spoil them rotten...”

This game hurts, but Bucky goes along with it. “You'd get mad at me for it, but secretly you'd be glad when they got things they wanted, because we never did when we were kids.”

“They'd have the most dangerous cast of aunts and uncles ever.” Steve adds; he's smiling for real now.

Bucky stifles a laugh. “Oh my god, Aunt Natalia and Uncle Clint. They wouldn't have problems with bullies. Any kid that ever picked on them would just...disappear.”

“Tony would try and be their favorite. He'd build them robots, so it might work. And Pepper would just...show up with truckloads of tiny clothing and lists of the pros and cons of different New York private schools. Bruce would start tutoring them before they were old enough to talk, so they'd wind up smarter than the both of us combined.”

“Natalia would train the girls to beat up the boys, and Clint would show off for them with his bow and arrow. I'd have to have contests with him to prove that their dad was cooler than their uncle, of course. And then you and I would fight about shooting guns in front of the kids.”

Steve shudders. “Between Pepper and Natasha, we would wind up with some pretty scary daughters. And none of our children would ever, ever be able to date.”

“Oh yeah, never,” Bucky agrees, “This whole tower would become a competition to see who could scare anyone trying to date one of the kids the worst...Shit, Steve, if we had children, one of us would have to learn how to cook.”

“I'd be okay with that...Kids would have to do the dishes, though.”

“Steve, the house does the dishes.”

Steve chuckles at that. “See? I'm totally out of touch with this century. Speaking of the house, we should go inside. I'm getting hungry.”

They head indoors. “I'm pretty sure the house doing the dishes is just a Stark thing, Steve. Wait—you don't think the stuff in this place comes standard for the twenty-first century, do you?”

“I lived at SHIELD for a while, remember! I'd be lying if I said that all this stuff isn't what I was hoping for when I woke up and found out it was the new millennium, though. And flying cars. I was bummed about the lack of flying cars.”

They're heading for the kitchen, but Steve takes a detour and pulls Bucky down onto a couch instead, glommed on Bucky like some kind of octopus before they're even on the cushions. 

“Mmm...Not that I'm complaining,” Bucky says, making himself comfortable by _sprawling out_ on Steve, “But I thought you were hungry.”

Steve nuzzles his hair. “'M always hungry. If we wait, we can get some of the others to eat with us.”

“Sounds good to me. Though, Rogers, if you've dragged me onto a horizontal surface with no intention of sex, we're gonna have problems.” Bucky tilts his head up for a long, slow kiss. 

Steve laughs against his lips. “All things in good time, Barnes, all things in good time.” They stay like that a while. 

Eventually, Steve breaks away, more than a little breathless. “Hey, Buck—you know I love you, right?”

Yeah, he knows, but he's never gonna quite believe it, never gonna stop going over the moon when he hears it. “Love you, too.”

“You know me. You know that means I'm in it for the long haul.”

Bucky swallows; Steve's voice is every kind of sincere and it kind of pushes the air right out of his lungs. Steve does that, sometimes.

“I wanna help you through this—all of it, anything you let me.” Bucky goes in for another kiss, but Steve stops him. “If doing this, being with you, means we're all I ever get, that's enough—at least, I think it is.”

Bucky doesn't know what to do with that—he never has, and doesn't think he ever will. So he just tries to press his gratitude into a kiss, to breathe everything he's feeling into Steve's lungs. And he doesn't think it's enough—it doesn't even come close, but they'll make do.


End file.
